Introduction

Modular smartphone hardware is, at the very least, an intriguing concept: since phones are far from one-size-fits-all, it makes sense to let users choose the hardware features that matter most to them, and by making this hardware modular, it saves shoppers the expense of picking up a whole new phone every time their desires shift.

But for as nice as the idea is, actually making modular smartphones work is an uphill battle, and even giants like Google have looked long and hard at such projects before eventually declaring, “Nope!”

But last year Lenovo-owned Motorola did the impossible, and launched not just a modular smartphone, but a whole family of both modular phones and the modules that attach to them: the Moto Mods. We were promised that this wouldn't be a one-shot phenomenon, and this year they're indeed back, as we get a new phone and some new Moto Mods add-ons.

Will this new batch of hardware finally convince the nay-sayers that modular smartphones are here to stay? Or is there little here that's going to sway a critic who wasn't already won over by last year's lineup? Join us as we take a look at the new Moto Z2 Play, as well as a trio of new Moto Mods.

In the box:

Moto Z2 Play

Motorola Turbo Charge adapter

USB Type-C to standard-A cable

SIM tool

Safety card

Quick-start guide

Design

Thinner than the original Moto Z Play, but with that same, unavoidable Moto Z look

The blessing of support for Moto Mods can also be a bit of a curse: on the one hand, you're giving a phone support for a growing body of add-on hardware, letting users augment the handset with a heavy-duty camera, extra battery capacity, or maybe even a digital projector. But on the other hand, you're locking your phone into being a particular shape and size, with Moto Mods support inherently linked to the physical makeup of a phone.

While that does give Motorola some wiggle room to experiment with handset thickness, other aspects of the phone's design, from that utterly flat back panel to the prominent, centered camera bump, are set in stone.

As a result, the Moto Z2 Play looks and feels a lot like its predecessors, even as it strays a bit from the decisions that went into making the original Moto Z Play. Perhaps most notably there, Motorola's decided to give us a thinner phone this time around, with the Z2 Play's 5.99mm thickness (no Moto Mods attached) coming in below the first gen's 6.99mm. As a consequence, though, battery size also takes a hit – which we'll talk about just a bit later.

Layout-wise, we've got a 5.5-inch screen dominating the phone's face, with a fingerprint scanner below and front-facing camera hardware up top – including a rare dual-LED front-facing flash. The hybrid SIM tray (with support for microSD expansion) lives up top, and along the right side we've got the power button, as well as discrete up-and-down volume controls. Underneath we find the phone's USB Type-C port, and also the analog headphone jack – a feature we got on the first Moto Z Play, but not the other Moto Z phones.

On the back, there's a camera that sure looks a lot like those on earlier Moto Zs, but that's hiding some new hardware within, and down below is the critical Moto Mods interface.

By itself, the Moto Z2 Play is both quite thin and notably lightweight, coming in at just 145g. But neither of those will last for long, as the phone is just begging to have some Moto Mods attached.

Display

Bold colors are great, but come with some big tradeoffs

From the moment you first boot up the Moto Z2 Play, the phone looks ready to impress with a dazzling, high-contrast Motorola logo on-screen. It's a great way to grab your attention, and really emphasizes some of the best properties of the phone's 5.5-inch AMOLED display.

The screen's 1080 x 1920 resolution looks decent at this size, but by default the phone's interface doesn't take great advantage of all those available pixels, with text and on-screen elements displayed quite a bit larger than they need to be – and making the screen seem less well-equipped than it really is. Luckily, you can quickly make strides towards fixing that with a few settings tweaks.

But while we were impressed by that early onslaught of classic-AMOLED saturation and bright colors, that honeymoon period didn't last. By default the phone is set to its “vibrant” color mode, but even in “standard,” which claims to deliver realistic colors, our tests found the screen doing not such a great a job at accurately depicting colors – and beyond the general intensity issues we see with AMOLEDs, we also found magenta hues in particular to be poorly reproduced, leaning much more towards blue than they should.

Those disappointments continue when it comes to screen brightness, which seems to top out just north of 400 nits. That's significantly less bright than the majority of phones that cross our path, and notably worse than we saw on the much-more-affordable Moto G5 Plus – which hit nearly 600 nits.

In the end, the screen is detailed and colorful, but still comes up short in a few key areas, and even for a $400 phone, we expect a little more.

The CIE 1931 xy color gamut chart represents the set (area) of colors that a display can reproduce, with the sRGB colorspace (the highlighted triangle) serving as reference. The chart also provides a visual representation of a display's color accuracy. The small squares across the boundaries of the triangle are the reference points for the various colors, while the small dots are the actual measurements. Ideally, each dot should be positioned on top of its respective square. The 'x: CIE31' and 'y: CIE31' values in the table below the chart indicate the position of each measurement on the chart. 'Y' shows the luminance (in nits) of each measured color, while 'Target Y' is the desired luminance level for that color. Finally, 'ΔE 2000' is the Delta E value of the measured color. Delta E values of below 2 are ideal.

The Color accuracy chart gives an idea of how close a display's measured colors are to their referential values. The first line holds the measured (actual) colors, while the second line holds the reference (target) colors. The closer the actual colors are to the target ones, the better.

The Grayscale accuracy chart shows whether a display has a correct white balance (balance between red, green and blue) across different levels of grey (from dark to bright). The closer the Actual colors are to the Target ones, the better.

8 Comments

Display mode:

Always view all comments

"Those disappointments continue when it comes to screen brightness, which seems to top out just north of 400 nits. That's significantly less bright than the majority of phones that cross our path, and notably worse than we saw on the much-more-affordable Moto G5 Plus – which hit nearly 600 nits."
All of this results in a "good" max brightness rating ??

Seriously Phone Arena you do moan about silly things. Camera is decent and if same as G5 Plus then it's sharp and detailed as I have Moto G5 Plus. And G5 Plus also has a loud and pretty bassy front speaker, probably same as this handset, did you not even adjust EQ settings?? One thing of note Moto should have made the phone thicker with bigger battery and that would remove camera bump and need for a Mod

do you still read phonearena phone review? its a joke
i always skip to the last page to read pros and cons to get a little laugh and to entertain myself... that's all
and read comments if i have time to waste!!

This phone is essentially a downgrade to the original. How sad. It's no wonder Moto X4 is now shipping with a 3000mAh battery instead of a 3800mAh as previously rumoured...no need to buy this thing and it's overpriced mods!

Galaxy S9 first camera comparison vs iPhone X, V30, S8

MWC 2018: top smartphones to expect

All content (phone reviews, news, specs, info), design and layouts are Copyright 2001-2018 phoneArena.com. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part or in any form or medium without written permission is prohibited! Privacy . Terms of use . Cookies . Team